A Course of Action / The arts in San Francisco don't have to wither -- there are solutions to the problem

Bob Graham, Chronicle Senior Writer

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, October 19, 2000

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"The pioneering behavior of the e-world is imitating the pioneering behavior of many other San Francisco art movements," said performance artist Keith Henessy. Chronicle photo by Michael Macor

"The pioneering behavior of the e-world is imitating the pioneering behavior of many other San Francisco art movements," said performance artist Keith Henessy. Chronicle photo by Michael Macor

A Course of Action / The arts in San Francisco don't have to wither -- there are solutions to the problem

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Unless artists form new alliances and use their creativity to find the space to exercise it, San Francisco is in danger of becoming a place where art is presented but no longer created.

Everybody knows what the problem is: lots of money and new development increasingly putting cutting-edge culture out on the streets.

Can the city prevent further erosion of its diverse artistic heritage? Some say it may be too late, that too much has been lost and that the "new economy" has permanently homogenized the San Francisco art scene. Others in the arts, government and private sectors aren't ready to throw in the towel and are looking for solutions. Certainly, if a solution can be found, it will require psychological leaps and new alliances -- political, economic, artistic and social. No single force can do the job alone.

"First of all, you need a vision," says Jeanne Lutfy. She is associated with one of the great public visionaries, Harvey Lichtenstein, who 30 years ago began putting the Brooklyn Academy of Music on the cultural map. Now he's turning the neighborhood near BAM into a cultural district that offers some pointers for San Francisco.

It will be a mixed-use district that includes nonprofit offices, rehearsal areas, housing and commercial space. It recycles underused buildings. It is at a transit hub.

A political effort, it involves the community and draws on city funds.

While many blame the Internet-based economy for pushing artists out of the city, others see the dot-com community as a necessary partner and a new source of income.

Jonathan Youtt of the artists' collective CellSpace says it's "important to build a bridge with high-tech industry, which is currently seen as the culprit in this runaway displacement of the arts and nonprofit sector."

Hagen agrees that "we should not create a bogeyman" of the dot-coms. "The new economy is here to stay," she says. "It's important that we acknowledge that, understand its effect on how the city operates and adjust to it."

It's going to take new alliances. "A lot of arts groups can learn from venture capital and venture philanthropy," she says. "Many of them are us," and by that she means progressive, positive and forward-looking. "It's not like they're somebody else.

"We know we cannot do it alone. We have a SWAT team of new-economy people who are helping us fund-raise," Hagen says. "We're searching for a partnership with a developer." She also is looking for new space along one of the major transit corridors -- Market Street, Van Ness Avenue or Mission Street.

Hagen says the connection with the new economy has changed the way nonprofits look at how they do business. "We're looking at it much like a startup company." If the pressure on the arts is greater than ever before, she says, "the resources are there."

Performance artist Keith Hennessy gives the dot-com connection a reverse spin: He puts the techies in a long, colorful San Francisco tradition.

"The pioneering behavior of the e-world," he says, "is imitating the pioneering behavior of many other San Francisco art movements" -- the Beats, he says, or punk rockers.

Hennessy thinks that when we look back at this moment in history, we will see that "the wave of new artists that came in the '90s, that came in the millennial shift, were actually computer artists, designers, conceptual artists working in capitalism."

Some dot-commers already are giving something back. Listen.com is one of several e-music companies sponsoring shows. Riffage.com bought the Great American Music Hall and has pledged to keep it business as usual.

The sea change in the economy caught people so unprepared, in Larry Rinder's opinion, that they didn't see it until it was almost too late, "like standing in the path of a moving train."

Rinder, a former Bay Area curator now at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, thinks the solution lies in the political will of San Francisco. Will the electorate consider, for example, subsidized housing for artists? "How much is the population willing to sacrifice to make that possible?"

Supervisor Leslie Katz goes so far as to recommend that the city use the power of eminent domain to take over abandoned or ill-used buildings, in the Tenderloin, for example, and turn them into space for nonprofits.

She says the mid-Market Street area, around Sixth Street, is another likely area. It is set to become a redevelopment project area next year, and a political consensus is being formed to make arts and rehearsal space a part of that project.

The city's school district, for example, has facilities that are used during the day but not at night, such as gymnasiums, where dancers could rehearse after hours. The Port Commission has vacant buildings, which, if brought up to code, might provide rehearsal space for rock bands.

Some artists are starting to think like real estate agents. "Renting is dead in San Francisco," says performance artist Hennessy. "It's only about buying."

Artists like him, who never thought in those terms, are going to have to get used to the idea. "The basic vision as far as art spaces goes is that the spaces have to be bought, and they have to be bought now," he says.

Many of the artists he's talking about make $20,000 a year maximum. "For us to imagine buying a building," he says, "that's a visionary action."

There are ways to do it. The Arts Alliance, for example, is working on a strategy to create a San Francisco Community and Art Land Trust. A land trust is a nonprofit corporation that raises public and private funds, purchases property and holds it in perpetuity. CellSpace's Youtt says in this case the land trust would be the first of its kind devoted to community-based arts and services.

It "would further establish San Francisco as a progressive and visionary city that has solutions coming from the building of bridges between established communities and the new economy," Youtt says in an e-mail that has been circulating around San Francisco.

If the artists are squeezed out, Rinder says, sounding like the devil's advocate, some of the capital floating around at least could be used to make San Francisco "a city of extraordinary museums." But that would make it primarily "a city of presentation, not creation."

Maybe for some people, he says, that's good enough. "Maybe that's the best to hope for."

CULTURE CRASH

A Three-Part Series

TUESDAY

San Francisco's recent economic boom is forcing cutting edge arts groups out of the city and threatening the city's long history of cultural adventurousness and diversity.

What has closed so far and what is facing closure.

The city's late-night club scene is threatened by new commercial and residential development in SoMa.

The good old days. Remember when San Francisco was the center of the nation's rock music world? That couldn't happen today. .

YESTERDAY

A look at three different art spaces at various stages in the battle to survive.

Who is fighting "artistic gentrification" in San Francisco?

Don't blame the entire dot-com community: For some, the dot-com world is an outlet for creativity. .

TODAY

Can San Francisco realistically preserve what's left of its cultural diversity? A prescription for the future, with some alternative solutions.

Where are San Francisco's displaced creative types going?

How other major U.S. cities are trying to preserve cultural diversity.

The boom times are filling the coffers of the city's major arts organization, but even they see the need to preserve the cutting edge as part of the city's cultural fabric.

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